


Tether

by FanficsbyVe



Category: Dark Souls III
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-08-02 05:57:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16299449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FanficsbyVe/pseuds/FanficsbyVe
Summary: Friede realizes the past is not easily left behind when it follows you. One-shot.





	Tether

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even like Sir Vilhelm or Friede and have no idea why I wrote this. I hope it gives some people a bit of joy.

He’s back again.

Friede can see his shadow on the wall outside, at the entrance of the chapel. She wonders how long he’s been there this time. Standing guard, watching. Looking out over this bleak and slowly dying world long and rightly forsaken.

Most of the time, he’s elsewhere. In the other building, watching over the Painter, even though no one asked him to. No one asked him to be here at all. Yet he remains, in this cold, forsaken landscape. And tonight, he’s here once more.

She watches him come through the doors. Calmly, with his head up high and a steady gait. The one thing he could never do as the hangman he was in Londor. But they’re not in Londor. Here, he is not hated. Here, there is only confusion as to why he’s still there at all.

His eyes meet hers from behind his helmet and he approaches. She feels a pang in her chest as he bows before her, with the same kind of worship he used to do of old. She can tell he is smiling under his helmet. She knows. She is probably the only one who ever saw him smile.

“My lady. I report uneventful tidings. No one has entered the painting, no one has left.”

She nods, ever so quietly. There is no point to saying anything. Nothing ever changes in this world, except that the rot increases a bit more every day. It’s the way she intended it, the way she keeps the Flame from every hurting her again. He, however, was never something she intended. Not here. Not in this world. 

“Would you desire my company tonight?”

She keeps herself from flinching but barely. He asks this every night he comes to her, every time after he has completed the tasks no one has ever given him. Needless to say, she tells him the same thing she always does.

“Vilhelm, perhaps it is time for you to go home now…”

He briefly stares at her. “This is my home, my Lady.”

Sometimes, she wonders if he truly believes it now. Whether years of loyal service have truly convinced him whether his home is where she is. Because she knows it isn’t and even now, she desperately wants to convince him of that. To go to the place he truly belongs. To the city they were both born but she can no longer stand.

“We both know it is not, Vilhelm. You should go back to Londor. You are free now. I gave you your onyx sword for a reason.”

She swears he smiles behind his helmet again. “And I cherish it every day, my Lady.”

The Lady of the Painted World gnashes her teeth behind her lips. He is avoiding the subject, deflecting. He knows fully well that the onyx was a parting gift. What its meaning was. He knows very well that she didn’t want him to follow her here. Yet he plays ignorant or worse, simply ignores it and will not budge, no matter what she says. A silence falls between them and she wishes it’s oppressive enough for him to leave. Yet he doesn’t.

“Elfriede…”

That name is one step too far. “Do not call me that.”

He pauses for a moment, near flinching at her icy tone, yet then speaks again. “You know I would rather be here than anywhere else. There is nothing for me in Londor. My heart is still yours. A sword and an order cannot easily change that. A Flame that burns to ash cannot either.”

This time, Friede clenches her jaw. Her hands move further under her sleeves and her head leans forward to hider her face further under her hood. Her habit-like robes protect her, she feels. They help hide her greatest shame. The shame of being unkindled, naught but ash barely worthy to fuel the Flame that gives humanity true life…

The city she was born in was a place of Hollows. A place that shunned the Fire and the cycle the Gods had thrust upon them. There, they embraced humanity’s most bare, basic form and the madness that came with it eventually. It was a faith her parents, grandparents and all their ancestors before them had adhered to and it was the faith she and her younger sisters Yuria and Lilliane were meant to uphold as they took over the Sable Church, as shepherds to a flock of those who knew the truth.

It had been a privileged life as well. The leaders of the Sable Church had a life of luxury, decadence on par with the Four Kings and the ancient King Jareel. It also meant discretion the rest of Londor didn’t enjoy. Few batted an eyelid when she took Vilhelm, the knight and hangman serving her and her sisters, for a lover nor did they begrudge them consuming fine foods their Hollowed bodies no longer needed. Theirs was the life of princesses and all they had to do for it was providing guidance to the lost souls of a fallen kingdom.

Even so, the girl then known as Elfriede despised it. She had despised everything about Londor. The Hollows. The creed that was laid down with the Four Kings and the Darkwraiths. She hated this place of death and stagnancy, of having to wear rings to hide a decrepit state. The way she was feared as an abomination by the rest of the world. Her lot in life had smothered her and the Flame drew her like a moth, beating her wings viciously against a deadly dark that had always swallowed her whole.

Yet, just like a moth, the Flame ended up consuming her.

Perhaps she was too desperate. Perhaps her motives weren’t pure. Perhaps her will wasn’t strong enough. Either way, the fire burned her whole and spat her back out, leaving her Unkindled. A failure, unwanted kindling, forever marked with her inadequacy until the end of time. And, as if to punish her for her folly, it left her face and body scarred, displaying her wayward actions for all to see.

She had known, then and there, that going back to Londor was not an option. It was all too clear what had happened to her. She was a traitor now, someone who had spat in the face of everything Londor stood for and chose to cling to the Flame. A force that had clearly rejected her and scarred her and left her nothing but ash. Her gamble at failed and now, she had lost everything.

So, after slipping back into the city at night to tie up loose ends, she had left Londor behind her. She had said farewell to her sisters, no matter how they cried and begged and promised forgiveness. She had given Vilhelm his onyx sword, the custom gift of discharging servants of the church, and told him their affair was to end then and there. She renounced everything, even her name, and broke her ties with Londor forever. A few hours later, she had stolen out of the city walls again, the darkness hiding her shame, and set out, never to return.

Eventually, she came here. In this world behind a living canvas. A world that she could convince to die a quiet an dignified death, by convincing its painter and imprisoning the next, rather than to set it all ablaze again or the stagnant undeath that was hollowing. Here, she can have the ending she sought. Here, she could pass into nothingness quietly.

It was only a week later that she realized Vilhelm had followed her here. How he did it without her noticing or how he even entered the painting, she didn’t know. Yet he was there, pledging his loyalty to her once more, proclaiming to still love her and until this day, he has not left. The undead of Londor, clinging to the ash he should despise.

“I am no longer the Elfriede you once loved, Vilhelm. I am Unkindled. I am marked by my own weakness and my own failure. And yet here I am, cravenly staving off my own end as long as I can. I am not someone worth staying in this rotten world for.”

It is in that moment that he rises from the floor. He approaches her and before she knows it, she feels his hands run up her legs. Even with the hard, cold armor, a twinge of warmth passes through her body. It seems almost cruel. Even though her body is kindling, it can still respond to affection. It can still feel desire.

He raises up his visor and she finds herself staring at the face she knows so well. Sharp. Hard. Angular. With a straight noise and icy blue eyes that have seen a lot of suffering, including some caused by his own hands. Yet to her, those eyes harbor something genuine that hurts her all the more. His words only drive that point home.

“Then let me ease that end, in any way that I can.”

Friede doesn’t know whether she wants to laugh or cry at those words. He loves her. He truly, sincerely loves her. Enough to stay here, in this miserable place. Enough not to walk away from her and save himself. Worse, she loves him too and perhaps, either too much or not enough seeing how she doesn’t have the will to drive him off with force, just so he lives where she likely will not.

Any resolve she might have had to that end all but disappears as his lips touch hers. She yields immediately, leaning in closer, desperate for but the tiniest bit of normal human feeling. To have but a moment where she is not reminded of her own state and what she has now become.

Before she realizes it, his armor is off, gone with years of unpracticed ease. The same goes for her clothes. She is naked, a state she mostly fears, fully faced with the scarring the Flame has inflicted on her body. She wishes she could feel the shame she should, but Vilhelm is too good at acting like it isn’t even there. He touches her all the same, as if the blemishes weren’t there, and doesn’t give her a moment to contemplate them.

It’s hard to think of anything when he’s in her. When they couple like lovers or rut like animals. When he’s lapping at her breasts. When he holds her close and demands she says his name. She can still feel pleasure as can he and even in this dying world, this little bit of humanity is hard to resist.

Part of her realizes just how perverse all of this is. The two of them, making love on a pile of their own clothes, while wretched creatures wander around just outside the door and a hollowed Corvian is flailing himself in the catacombs. How willingly she engages in this little bit of life while bravely trying to resign herself to eventual death. Yet, she cannot stop, does not want to and loses herself to the feeling of him taking her roughly, all the way to a release that makes her forget everything, just for a while.

He takes his time before he finally separates from her and she bites back the feeling of emptiness that beseeches her at this. The room feels cold again now the deed is done and she feels foolish for having so easily given in once more. Clearly, she is not yet the stoic, sacred Lady of the Painting she wants to be yet. She doubts she will ever be, as long as Vilhelm has deemed this his home same as she has.

They dress again quickly and in silence. Her skin flushes red as he helps her into hers, with the same immense patience he seems to practice with everything in life. She watches how he fastens his sword at his side, puts his helmet back on, only for him to turn to her. Even when she does not see them, she knows there’s warmth in those icy blue eyes and that she is the only one who will ever feel that.

“I will be back again soon, Elfriede.”

This time, him saying her name doesn’t hurt so much. Even so, she knows that’s not how it should be. Not here, not in this place of quiet death, of her own making. It should to have to be his grave as well and in truth, she doesn’t want it to be. She made her choice long ago and deep down, she still hopes he makes the right one for himself.

“Perhaps, it is finally time to go, sweet Sir Vilhelm. Perhaps, this should be goodbye…”

She says it with all the gravitas she can muster, with the commanding voice she issued to him so many times in public, when executing her enemies or defending her honor. Yet underneath that command is the slightest break. A hint of pain, brought on by the concern of a lover and not the will of a lady. Somewhere, she feels he knows that too.

A soft chuckle, between disdain and amusement, is her only answer. He reached out, squeezing her hand in comfort, then marches back outside, disappearing into the snow. Soon, there’s not so much as a trace from him and she finds herself alone, with disbelief and embarrassment and the last lingering traces of extasy she felt just moments ago.

She returns back to her usual seat, fully dressed and clutching her scythe. Hoping that there will be no more temptation. Hoping that Vilhelm will finally heed her words. Trying to push this whole incident from her mind, just like all the ones who have occurred before, but being unable to. A wry smile becomes etched into her own face. Deep down, she already knows that what she said to him is fruitless.

Her lover is like her, in that regard. One to stubbornly cling to a fate they chose, no matter the cost. It doesn’t matter what she does or say, just like it didn’t matter what Yuria and Lilliane did or said. Every person has their tether, a thing that keeps them from full release, and its seems that she is Vilhelm’s as much as he is hers.

He will be back. He always will. Until the end of this world, when rot has taken over.


End file.
